


Glitches

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Sure, Bill knows that reality is an illusion, time is dead, and meaning has no meaning. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that it sure doesn’t feel that way from the inside.





	Glitches

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Glitches  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Characters: Bill Cipher, Dipper Pines, Stanley “Stanford” Pines  
> Summary: Sure, Bill knows that reality is an illusion, time is dead, and meaning has no meaning. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that it sure doesn’t feel that way from the inside.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: ...I’m pretty convinced by this point that everything I’m writing here is junk. Sorry, but I’m posting it anyway. (I honestly wrote 2K of Bill in a shower with a straight face? Seriously? *dies*)  
>   
>  ~~Out of time sequence, because that’s how I _roll_... (for this one, anyway.)~~ \--No longer out of time sequence.  
>   
>  _Author’s Note, 2018-Jul-29: This fic takes place in the afternoon/evening of Day 6 (or 7-ish) of Bill Cipher’s return. In the meantime, between the end of[But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952116) (the afternoon of Day 1) and this fic, several days have passed. Bill has been sleeping ‘eight hours out of every ten’ for the first couple days (Day 1 through Day 3), and Stan has let him do it. (Stan’s pretty sure Bill might have a concussion, actually.) Mid-morning of Day 2, Stan leaves the room for a bit, Bill ‘escapes’ out through the bedroom window, and then Bill calls Stan out, trying to ‘take on’ Stan with magic outside of the barrier... and that goes poorly for Bill. (This event is talked about in later fics, in the ending author’s notes of [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), in [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), and in [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627).) In the evening of Day 2, Stan starts trying to put together with Bill what they will eventually refer to in shorthand as a ‘mutual nonaggression agreement’, and Bill seems grudgingly open to going along with it because of what happened that afternoon._  
>   
>  _It takes about a day-and-a-half (until mid-morning of Day 4) for Stan to get the initial structure of said agreement worked out with Bill, to a point where he’s at least reasonably certain that he could safely leave the kid alone in the same room with somebody else (who isn’t him) for more than a minute without somebody ending up dead. (Not that Stan plans on leaving the kid alone in the same room with anybody else right away._  
>   
>  _Because of this, Stan decides it’s time to start having Bill out of the bedroom, eating food with everybody else at mealtimes, and brings Bill out to the kitchen for lunch on Day 4; nothing goes_ completely _sideways and wrong in a way that Stan can’t handle, and nobody dies, so Stan’s been making Bill eat meals in the kitchen with everybody else ever since. Ford, conversely, didn’t show up for breakfast the morning of Day 4, and has been pulling a “vanishing act” on them at mealtimes ever since. Stan hasn’t really seen Ford since the evening of Day 3, and assumes that it’s a combination of Ford (a) being too busy with tracking down the cultists who brought Bill back to be bothered to show his face around the Shack, and (b) not wanting to be anywhere near Bill Cipher if he doesn’t have to be. However, Ford is actually spending almost all of his time downstairs in his basement lab, preoccupied with trying to find a way to kill Bill that doesn’t require use of the Zodiac Circle._  
>   
>  _Throughout this entire time period, Stan has been largely staying in the same room with Bill, almost all the time -- and most of the time that Bill’s been awake, they’ve been talking extensively. One of the only times Stan consistently isn’t in the same room as Bill during this time period is when Bill is using the bathroom; he “just” waits in the hallway within sight of the door for Bill, and he lets Bill spend as much time in there as he wants. Day 6 is the first day that Stan stops escorting Bill to the bathroom; instead, Stan generally does something in the kitchen, where he can hear the water running in the bathroom upstairs. This fic takes place in the afternoon/evening of Day 6 (or 7-ish)._

\---

Bill frowned as he showered in the upstairs bathroom of the Shack. He ran his hands through his hair, then paused, then _grimaced_ , ducked his head down under the water spray and quickly scrubbed his hands back and forth through his hair repeatedly, _hard_.

He let out a sigh and let his hands fall. Who was he kidding, anyway? His hair felt weird. He had hair, and his hair felt _weird_. ...No, wait, not weird -- weird was good, he liked weird! --It felt _strange_ \-- and **not** in a good way.

He felt a moment of vertigo as he blinked and was in a different, smaller shower stall, and then back again, and that felt even stranger. --Except _not_ , because his body had almost felt _familiar_ for a moment, except that _that_ body hadn’t been-- it hadn’t-- it-- it-- wasn’t the one he was in just now.

He realized he was leaning against the pipe running up to the shower head in front of him, head only a few inches away from the exposed metal, his arm splayed out against it as if he must’ve automatically caught himself with it, and Bill nearly cursed out loud, because _muscle memory?_ Autonomous reactions? He shouldn’t be getting _used_ to this body -- this was _not_ okay!

He pushed off of the pipe with a snarl, and then shuddered as the feel of the water falling down on him went cold-hot-cold-hot against his skin, like a strobelight of temperature. He slammed his eyes shut and swayed up against the pipe again, turned and felt his right temple knock up against the curved rod of metal, shuddering as he tried to get out from under the water spray. But he couldn’t, and it didn’t help anyway -- it felt like he was still completely under the spray at times, even though he _knew_ he wasn’t, and the rapid cycling of sensations didn’t stop; it continued. _Hot-cold-hot-cold-hot._

He braced both forearms and pushed himself upright -- stopped immediately and swayed forward again when putting himself back under the water stream left him even less able to distinguish between what was happening _now_ , and-- the divergent sensory input started to become almost overwhelming, messing with his body’s sense of equilibrium, making his legs unsteady. He clenched his jaw and kept both forearms braced against the metal pipe to keep himself on his feet, fighting the dizzy vertigo-like sensation that had returned with a vengeance, worse than before. The temperature continued to flip, cold-hot-hot-cold. --He tried slamming his forehead face-first into the pipe, to _make it stop_.

It didn’t help; nothing helped.

...and this time the feeling of vertigo _wasn't_ going away.

Bill felt _wrong_.

He sat down before his knees gave out. They ached-didn’t-ache. He felt his torso sway, tried to brace himself with his hands against the floor of the tub -- too late. He felt his head drop back and his shoulders slump and his arms go halfway numb as all the energy drained right out of him, down with the water, out through his fingertips; he couldn’t see it; he could feel it; he didn’t _want_ to feel it.

His eyes slitted open almost against his will. He was staring straight up.

The ceiling of the shower changed color, like a snapshot-snapshot-snapshot. _Everything_ did. The shower curtain shifted into a tile wall, then back again, then into a glass enclosure, then a walk-in, then another tub-- the curtain cycled through white to yellow-cracked to green to--

The water was freezing-- no, burning-- no, lukewarm-- falling softly / dripping down / pounding his head like a _drum_ \-- he could feel it running through his _hair_ \-- he wasn’t supposed to have hair -- his hair was long-short- _felt **strange**_ \--

This was not okay-- this was _not_ okay--

He was standing-- no, sitting down-- no, bent over-- no, standing-- no, he was-- was-- _was_ \--

he was--

 _he_ \--

At something of a distance, he felt his body shudder and fall. It slumped sideways and dropped to lie in a sprawling heap across the bottom of the tub, while his mind--

\---

“Okay, enough is enough,” Dipper told himself. It had been almost an hour, and Bill was _still_ in the bathroom -- he could hear the water running. He stomped out of his bedroom and over to the bathroom door. “How could it possibly be taking you so long to finish a simple shower?” DIpper paused, then muttered with a sinking feeling, “...Unless you don’t have any idea what a shower actually _is_ , other than turning on the water in the tub.”

He listened at the door of the bathroom to the sound of the shower running… and nothing else going on. No movement.

“Geez, Bill, you couldn’t just ask for help?” Dipper grumbled a little louder. He turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. “If you’ve used up all the hot water--"

Dipper frowned as he saw the curtain in the way, but didn’t see the top of Bill’s blue-haired head.

“Bill?” Dipper said, feeling weirded out for a moment. Then it occurred to him to wonder if Bill was even still in there. He didn’t see the shadow of anyone standing there.

Dipper frowned angrily. “Bill, so help me,” he told himself, grabbing the corner of the shower curtain, “If you just left the hot water on so that I’d be stuck taking a freezing cold shower, I’ll--”

He stopped talking after he’d shoved the curtain aside. He was left staring instead.

Bill was there. His body was sprawled out oddly in the bottom of the tub. It didn’t look comfortable. Dipper wasn’t sure _what_ it looked like, other than scrunched together a little bit with his arms all akimbo, almost face-down.

But that wasn’t the first thing he really _saw_.

“...What,” Dipper breathed out, as he stared down at Bill’s body, which was clothed in only a ratty pair of completely water-soaked boxer shorts. He wasn’t staring at that though. He was staring at Bill’s bare back, out on full display.

Or rather, at what was _on_ Bill’s back.

It was dark black, in stark contrast to his pale, almost golden-hued skin. It started up at the base of his neck, and ended just below his hips. It ran down the length of his entire spine. It branched out at his shoulders, his upper-back, and his waist.

Dipper had only seen glimpses of _slivers_ of what it must be before, but he still _recognized_ it all the same. He knew **exactly** what it was.

He should close the shower curtain. Grunkle Stan would be so angry with him. He knew that.

But his fingers itched for a pen and his journal, or maybe a camera, as he stared at it, a mystery he’d known existed but had never quite managed to actually _see_ before, no matter how hard he’d tried. He really hadn’t expected to see it _here_ , on **Bill** of all people... but in retrospect, maybe he should have? And so Dipper found himself caught there, staring.

But somewhere in the back of his brain something was clamoring to be heard, and after awhile it finally got loud enough that his subconscious kicked it upstairs to the level of conscious thought.

Dipper blinked, and all at once he realized that Bill body was twitching and spasming at odd intervals in the bottom of the tub.

“...Bill?” Dipper said, with a growing feeling of trepidation that leaked into his voice. He stepped forward, and then slowly knelt down next to the side of the tub.

Bill didn’t move.

“You better not be faking this, you stupid dorito,” Dipper breathed out nervously, slowly reaching out a hand and already kicking himself for it. “...I can’t believe I’m falling for this,” he muttered, as his hand came down on Bill’s shoulder.

He’d expected Bill to reach up and grab his hand, lightning-fast, cackling. He’d expected Bill to shove himself upright and yell ‘Boo!’ or ‘Gotcha, Pine Tree!’ right in his face, and laugh at his panicked reaction as he fell over backwards.

Bill didn’t do anything at all.

Dipper frowned.

“Bill?” He leaned forward a little more and tentatively shook Bill’s shoulder slightly. It felt like he was moving dead weight.

Dipper stared at this. He slowly retracted his hand, and started paying more attention to what he was seeing, than worrying about what Bill was going to do to him _next_. Worrying wasn’t helping, especially when Bill hadn’t done anything to him _yet_. “Why haven’t you tried something yet? You should have by now…” Because Bill _should_ have tried _something_ by now, and that he hadn’t meant... something was wrong?

“Ugh, how screwed up is it that you **not** pulling some crazy thing on me makes me think that something is wrong with you?” Dipper complained out loud, letting out his breath in annoyance. He stared down at Bill for awhile, and then something dawned on him that had him relaxing a bit.

“You’re not supposed to fall asleep in the tub, Bill,” Dipper muttered to himself, dropping his chin down onto his hand, leaning against the side of the tub, because _of course_ the insane triangle would twitch in his sleep on his side like a half-feral wolf -- why _wouldn’t_ he sleep as weirdly as he did everything else? Dipper only felt a little stupid for not thinking of it right away, though -- it was still _weird_ to think of the dream demon who never slept as someone _needing_ to sleep, and it was the first time Dipper had actually _gotten_ to observe him sleeping. Having sort-of seen him knocked-out unconscious and hauled-around places when they’d first found him stuck in human-form almost a week ago didn’t really count.

But wow, for a dream demon who really shouldn’t know what it felt like to get so tired that he needed to fall asleep, Bill sure was good at avoiding getting caught out at _doing_ it. Whenever Bill got that tired, he’d always managed to hide himself away in Grunkle Stan’s bedroom before he actually collapsed. Only Grunkle Stan had seen him asleep -- Great-Uncle Ford had been just as startled as Dipper to find out that Bill was sleeping now, but when he’d wanted to confirm it for himself, Grunkle Stan had given him a stony-eyed **glare** that had pretty firmly communicated that Ford would get an arm torn off -- long _before_ he even got anywhere near Bill -- if he even so much as looked like he was going to _try_ and enter Stan’s bedroom. By Stan himself.

Great-Uncle Ford hadn’t even _looked_ like he’d tried to do anything but give Stan’s room a wide berth after that, so Dipper certainly hadn’t been about to try anything himself. He had better sense than to make his Grunkle _that_ unhappy when he was being _that_ protective of the demonic dorito.

Which honestly didn’t make sense to him, but there it was.

...Or maybe it did. “If you have Grunkle Stan’s ‘not-a-tattoo’ on your back… what does that even mean?” Dipper murmured to himself. “Does Stan know about this?” He kind of had to, right? They were sharing the same room, and Bill wasn’t wearing the same clothes every day...

Bill lay where he was and didn’t respond, didn’t even move except for the twitching.

Dipper shook his head, then straightened, leaned over, and turned off the water, hoping there was still at least a little hot water left to conserve. Then he sat down completely and folded his arms on the edge of the tub, propping his chin on them. “...You _are_ just asleep and dreaming something weird, right? Or just messing with me?” he wondered out loud. ...Because what else could it be?

He frowned as he stared down at Bill, observing him carefully. With the water turned off, he could actually hear things instead of just the shower going, and he frowned a little more as he realized that the sound of Bill’s breathing seemed… erratic. And the more he watched Bill, the more that twitching seemed…

“Wait -- that’s…” Dipper’s head jerked up and his eyes glanced all over Bill as he realized -- Bill’s body was twitching and spasming _uncontrollably_ in the bottom of the tub -- the small movements were _random_ and _completely_ undirected.

“...Bill--?!” Dipper shoved himself up with his forearms, and then reached forward and grabbed at Bill’s side, shoved down and pulled Bill towards him, rolling him over onto his back. “You--” Dipper stopped and got a sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach when he saw Bill’s head loll around loosely on his neck as he did this, only sent rocking by the forced movement of his upper body. He froze when he got a good look at Bill’s face.

Bill’s eyes were half-lidded. His eyes were _unfocused_ and staring, his pupils the size of _pinpricks_.

All at once, Dipper realized that Bill wasn’t faking it. He wasn’t faking **anything**.

He flailed backwards, letting go of Bill like he was _on fire_.

“GRUNKLE STAN!!!!”

\---

Bill found out later than Dipper had found him, and Stanley had lifted him up and carried him out of the tub.

He refused to talk about what had happened.

\---


End file.
